Posts tagged American Alliance of Museums
Commentary: In the Glass Hive of Art News: Dark Clouds at the Met, Boston’s MFA
February 5, 2026 // Two weeks ago, unions grabbed the pot of gold at the end of the phony-baloney rainbow when the Metropolitan Museum of Art staff voted 542–172 to join the United Auto Workers. Counterintuitive, I know, but the UAW has a portfolio of bargaining units that includes boutique left-wing, white-collar culture workers such as the curators, conservators, librarians, archivists, designers, marketeers, visitor-services coordinators, and fundraisers at the Met. Along with bread-and-butter issues, these workers can be mobilized to wail over false values like open borders, which suppress working-class wages, the climate change hoax, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Your Abortion, Me Too, No Kings, From the River to the Sea, any or all while wearing “pussy hats,” which, ladies and real wannabe ladies, don’t flatter. So, a juicy, fresh plum is now added to the UAW stash.
MFA Boston will lay off 33 employees amid rising deficit and restructuring
February 2, 2026 // Unionised workers at the MFA fought to secure their first contract in 2022, following nearly two years of bargaining and a one-day strike. “In order to address a growing structural deficit and better serve our audiences, we are moving forward with a comprehensive plan to realign our organisation and create a sustainable business model,” a spokesperson for the MFA told The Art Newspaper in a statement. “Unfortunately, this plan includes the painful but necessary step of implementing a workforce reduction that calls for the elimination of 6.3% of total active employees. Leadership came to this decision only after careful consideration and extensive analysis.”
Workers at more Chicago cultural venues are unionizing, even during a precarious moment for museums
December 12, 2025 // Still, the process of unionization may not be smooth at every site. At Chicago Botanic Garden, there’s a disagreement between workers and management with what steps should be required to establish a union. Employees who are advocating for better pay, health care and safety on the job and are represented by CMRJB Workers United say they are asking employees to sign union cards. However, Chicago Botanic Garden leadership opposes that approach in favor of a secret ballot election to vote on the union. “To skip that step would really be disenfranchising those eligible employees,” Chicago Botanic Garden President and CEO Jean Franczyk told the Chicago Sun-Times. “The process has multiple steps and options that you can pursue. But the one that we think protects individual eligible workers’ rights is that supervised election.”
Why Workers at Growing Number of Nonprofits Are Unionizing
February 2, 2023 // Nonprofit employees may be more predisposed to unionizing than other workers. They tend to be younger, well educated, and altruistic — a perfect blend of characteristics that tip people toward interest in unions, says David Zonderman, a history professor at North Carolina State University who teaches labor and nonprofit history. Nonprofits come out of a tradition of charity and sacrifice, and most pay their employees less than private companies and government. As a result, many unionizing workers are looking for livable wages and opportunities to advance, all the more important as housing costs and inflation have shot up. Others see unions as a way to press for greater racial equity.
State of the unions: why US museum workers are mobilising against their employers
February 4, 2022 // TA report by the American Alliance of Museums, published in April 2021, found that museums closed to the public for an average of 28 weeks during 2020. More than 75% of those surveyed stated that their income fell by an average of 40% that year, while 56% went through rounds of layoffs and furloughs. Rehiring, in most cases, is off the table. Those who kept their positions have had to pick up the slack.